Trump administration set to announce sanctions against entire ICC, sources say

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s administration has prepared sanctions against the entire International Criminal Court and plans to announce them soon, two sources familiar with the matter said, a move that would step up its attack on the global tribunal that prosecutes war crimes and genocide worldwide.

The Trump administration has made no secret of its disdain for the court and has worked to undermine it. US officials want the court to drop its arrest warrants against Israeli leaders as well as a past probe into American troops in Afghanistan. Previous US sanctions have targeted individual court officials rather than the entire ICC.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July announced a campaign to isolate the court, calling on other countries to withdraw from the tribunal. And last month, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the ICC’s president and one of its top prosecutors. The sanctions against ICC president Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is from Senegal, freeze any assets that they have in US jurisdictions or that come into contact with the US financial system.

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“The Trump administration has been clear: the International Criminal Court is a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate,” Rubio said at the time. “We will not tolerate its assault on state sovereignty.”

Seye is a senior trial lawyer on the prosecution team that obtained an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip, and has been nominated for election as an ICC judge.

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“The ICC has become a kangaroo court that cloaks its abuse of power in the language of international law while undermining the very principles of justice,” Netanyahu wrote on X in response to last month’s US announcement, hailing Rubio’s “determined efforts against the ICC’s illegitimate overreach, and for making clear that the corrupt officials who lead the ICC will face consequences.”

Mame Mandiaye Niang, the ICC’s interim chief prosecutor, said earlier this month that he hoped Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin would end up in the dock.

Niang took over the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor during its biggest ever crisis, after his predecessor Karim Khan was dismissed over sexual abuse allegations.

Sanctions against the court have been prepared, the sources said, even though the exact timing of an announcement remained unclear. The Wall Street Journal cited officials who said the decision could be finalized as soon as this week during the United Nations General Assembly meeting.

Targeting the entire organization directly, as well as entities that cooperate with it, could severely undermine the court’s work.

Any entity-wide sanctions imposed by the US Treasury would prohibit US citizens and companies from providing funds, goods, or services to the court without a license from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Banks often over-comply with such US sanctions because they depend on access to the American financial system.

Among the court’s operations that could be affected by sanctions against the entire organization are the purchasing of IT services and insurance, the hiring of investigators and conducting everyday financial transactions, such as paying dozens of American employees, the ICC’s registrar and president have warned.

Trump’s opposition to the court goes back to his first term. It surfaced again with a plan to penalize ​ICC officials, an idea developed ​in November 2024 when ⁠Trump was reelected and the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu.

The ICC was established in 2002 by the international community to prosecute war crimes, ​genocide and crimes against humanity. It asserts jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute ‌atrocities itself.

The United States has never been an ICC member. Israel is not an ICC member and rejects its authority and jurisdiction over its nationals and activities. It says the ICC also has no jurisdiction regarding the Palestinians since there is no sovereign Palestinian state.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this story.

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